The Emergence of Social Media

When we think of social media in the modern era, we tend to think of using the internet to access websites and apps like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Pintrest, just to name a few. Originally, the internet was not used by regular, every day people as it is now. Instead, it was used mainly by governments, military, and researchers as a way to communicate and transfer information securely. Social media was one of the first civillian-aimed parts of the internet that gave the average user access to people around the globe, new information, and most importantly, a new public sphere in a nonphysical realm.

During the beginnings of social media in the early 1980s, social media looked a lot different. Forums, journals, blogs, and avatar-based games/programs were the face of social media in the early days of the internet. Some of the earliest, popular forums where people could interact on were the Computer Bulletin Board Systems, Communitree BBS, the WELL, and. In these forums, people could engage in civil discourse, exchange ideas and perspectives, engage in spiritual and philosophical debates, and interact with other people across the globe in general. The aim of these forums typically revolved around creating a broader, global community of individuals using the internet casually to carve their online identities through their own written speech. However, using the internet to discuss technology and exchanging research, ideas, and more were very common, sometimes moreso than the casual forums.

Users looking for solely casual interaction with others in a fun, engaging manner would instead head over to these avatar-based programs, most notably LambdaMOO and MUD. In these spaces, users could cultivate their avatar in whatever way the want: how they looked, their gender, building digital homes, experimenting with personalities and even sexuality ins ome cases. These were places where

  1. Early 1980-90ss (forums, journals, avatar-based games) a. Earliest forms of ‘social media’ include: Computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS/CBBS), CommuniTree BBS, and the WELL.
  2. A new form of interaction with people from across the world and formulation of new groups/communities.
  3. As with every other kind of (technological) disruption, mixed feelings over the emergence of a new form of socialization.
  4. The Internet/online communication was originally used for military and telecommunication, so ‘social media’ for civillians was revolutionary in a sense.

The Social Contract of ‘Objective Truth’

  1. Explain Shapin’s social contract - collective accumulation of knowledge and ‘agreed upon’ truths. The foundations of what binds humans together/the ‘requirements’ for moral bonds that allow human society to stay stable.
  2. The institutions that were predominantly understood to be ‘objective truth’ (government, televesion/mass media, health organizations/instituted, librarians, etc) leading up/during the mergence of social media
  3. Hopes/prospects of how social media could promote groupmind i.e. collective memory and building upon this social contract/construct of truth and knowledge.

The Immediate Responses/Reactions:

Pros/Hopes:

  1. A way for humans to transmit and recieve information faster than ever before. Lack of censorship from traditional insitutions. Regular ‘every-day people’ are able to contribute to collection of information/news via blogs offering new perspectives, information, and a way to combat (harmful) propaganda from traditional forms of information/mass media. A way to unify the divide between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ journalism.

  2. Creation of new communities/accumulation of knowledge/altruism and revitalizing the world community in the hopes of working towards a more peaceful world, access to education/information, and (a) safespace away from the harsh realities of the world. ‘Global Village’ and democratizing a new frontier.

  3. A form of liberation/soverignty from oppressive governments/government oversight and surveillance. A possibility of creating a new form of society with it’s own rules/laws/social contract. A place where people from all walks of life and beliefs/thoughts/philosophies can be accepted without prejudice.

  4. A place where formation, exploration, and creation of identity can be done from the comfort of ones safespace. Social media, especially after the introduction of MySpace, offered a place for people, especially youth, to explore their identities in a ‘safer’ manner comapred to the real world. Youth could experiement without fear of immediate repurcussion.

Cons/Fears:

  1. ‘Traditional’ journalism vs. blogs: the transition of social media as a means of getting real-world information through blogs cannot be done, but early blogs in the 90s show otherwise. Social media cannot be trusted and can never be a means of transporting reliable information. Lack of ‘fairness, accuracy, and truth’, pushing more to a ‘publish, then filter’ approach to journalism rather than methodical approaches. This lack of ‘vetting’ makes it easy for misinformation to spread like wildfire.

  2. Online vs. Offline Community: Transitioning to online communities can cause a breakdown of real-world conenctions, leading to isolation and a distrust towards fellow memebers of society. Digital divide (i.e. lack of access to the internet for many in the world) leads to questions about who is even able to access information the internet/social media has to offer, leading many to be left in the dark, and therefore not attaining the ‘democrataziation’ as hoped for. Politicization and corporations interference seeing users as a way to consume propaganda and capital, as well as viewing users as ‘commodities’.

  3. The Spread of Mis/Dis/information: Fears of faceless accounts and activity make it easy for unreliable narratives to be pushed, and never to be held accountable as it is not a ‘physical’ realm. Fear surrounding illegal activity happening such as reported cases of virtual sexual assault. Hiveminds and echo chambers leading to increased xenophobia both on- and offline. Manufactured misinformation (called disinformation) to divide and break down moral bonds/social trust between humans and drive a stake between proper and civil discourse (disinfotainment). a. Social media’s anonymity makes it easy for people to falsify their identities, leading readers to believe that the author/poster/person behind the account is an expert and thereby believing false information from a so-called ‘authoritative’ source of information. This can easily break down the social construct and dynamic of trust.

  4. The Impact(s) on ‘Truth’: Because information is not vetted, any singular person can say whatever they like, causing a spread of misinformation. The anonymity aspect of social media paired with falsifying accounts of identities, experience/expertise/scholarship, news, and more causing crisis and fears. Can cause a breakdown of the fragile social construct of trust found in Shapin’s and Levy’s view of knowledge and truth being affected over time. An increased, new understanding of what truth is: objective, not a social dynamic/construct.

But How is This Any Different From Past ‘Disruptions’?

  1. Insanely faster spread of (mis/dis) information leading to faster real-world consequences.
  2. Faceless accounts that spread such information. Probability of dishonesty at its peak
  3. Anyone is able to say anything regardless of vetting. No more middle man such as editors, publishers, and lack of access to higher institutions.
  4. Faster dissolution of trust of institutions and collective judgements of ‘truth’/knowledge/social bonds.

Social Media in Modernity and Its Impacts

  1. Studies have shown acceptance of information is moreso based upon feelings rather than scientific data. Information is now pushed by algorithms rather than users actively searching for answers leading to confirmation bias and harmful ideologies.

  2. Disinformation and misinformation travel faster than actual information. Echo chambers are more prevalent than ever, and has caused people to isolate themselves within their own biases, creating hostile environments both online and offline. This has lead to a rise in conspiracy theories and distrust in scientifically-supported data.

  3. Centering of social media has led to a breakdown of social trust/bonding including within family units. Social contract of trust is at its breaking point like never before.

  4. Advertising from companies and ideologies influences information seen, and peoples responses to it.

Connection to AI

  1. Increased risk of developing one’s own personal echo chamber, that can easily be littered with false or outright fabricated information.
  2. AI is able to replciate and output responses faster than humans can
  3. A faceless amalgamation of data retrieved from human user input, both to AI and from the internet itself, creating a false sense of ‘personhood’. Isolation.
  4. Falsifying expertise/scholarship and placing itself as an ‘authoritative’ figure, making it hard to refute to those uneducated/without proper training to notice falsities.

How I Used AI for This Essay

This essay was researched and written with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic.

AI was useful for: generating an initial outline, suggesting relevant historical figures and events, and helping draft transitions between sections. I used it as a starting point—a well-read research assistant who could quickly surface names and dates and connections.

AI was not a reliable source for specific claims, quotations, or bibliographic details. Every source cited here was verified through actual databases (JSTOR, Google Scholar, library catalogs) or the original texts. Several sources that an AI initially suggested turned out to have incorrect publication dates, wrong page numbers, or—in two cases—to not exist in the form described. AI is not a substitute for source verification; it is a starting point for research, not an endpoint.

The deeper limitation: AI flattened the historiographic debates. When I asked it to explain “the significance of Wikipedia,” it gave a confident, balanced-sounding answer that missed exactly the tensions and contradictions that make the history interesting. Historians argue. They disagree. They revise. AI tends to synthesize and harmonize. The most important intellectual work in this essay—deciding what the evidence actually means—was mine to do.

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